There’s always that moment in a social gathering before everyone is too drunk to care where nobody knows what to do. Conversation stalls and the inevitable question is raised: “What should we do now?”

Now, the answer to this question is entirely dependant on the type of people at the gathering. Some people want to play drinking games: Kings, Flip Cup, ect; others just want to chill out and play some video games or watch a movie; still others want to pull out a board game. And while all of those options sound amusing enough, apathy and indecision usually leads to nobody doing much of anything.

So next time you’re hanging with your friends and that question rears its ugly head, you should try this game that me and my friends enjoy.

It’s called Blank White Cards. We did not invent this game, though we certainly tweaked it to the point where it barely resembles the original. We originally found this game on the internet in high school and went through so many generations of rules that the game now is entirely different. So goes evolution.

In any case, this game is as fun or as shitty as the people playing it. All you need to play is paper, pens, and hard surfaces for people to write on. Fold the paper into fourths and cut/ rip them so that you have some cards. If you have the cash to spare, index cards work just as well. Everyone takes 5 slips of paper and creates 5 cards for the initial deck.

A card has three elements: A title, a picture, and an effect.

A title is pretty self explanatory. You’re creating a card, you need to give it a name.

A picture is also self explanatory. This is the meat of the card and where it’s easiest to start. Just draw a picture of something. Anything. Yes. Anything. Needless to say, when we were playing this game in high school roughly 40% of the cards we drew had dicks on them.

Finally, there’s an effect. This is the one that is hardest for newbies to wrap their heads around because there is so much freedom that it leaves them in a panicked state of indecision. The card has to do something. You could invent a point system, you could make somebody state a fact about themselves, you could incorporate a rule from another game, like Kings or Asshole or something. There isn’t enough space here to describe all of the possible options. Though a good standby for when you’re stumped and already have a picture and a title is “Draw a Blank.” That is, you make whoever draws that card take a blank slip of paper/index card from the blank pile and have them create another card.

I should note that there doesn’t need to be any unity between these three elements.

So, a card would look more or less like this:

The Picture is You Trying to Think of a Card to Make

So once everyone’s made their five initial cards, they put them all together into a pile and shuffle them around. Then the game begins. Then players go around (one at a time) in a circle flipping the top card, reading the title out loud, showing the group the picture, and doing whatever the effect says. Naturally, there are going to be some cards that ask you to do some outlandish things (I recall a card from a recent game that demanded that I crumple it up and shove it up my ass) and you may or may not do them at your own discretion. There aren’t any penalties for not doing a card, though there also aren’t any rewards for doing it. The game is meant to amuse and serve as a creative outlet.

So yeah, that’s the game. You go around flipping cards until the deck is gone. Then you decide whether you want to make more cards or do something else. I want to stress again the open-ended nature of this game. You can literally do anything. We like to play it as a drinking game and include cards that do Kings rules like categories, waterfall, chicks, ect. You can use it as an ice breaker game to get to know people by getting them to say their favorite color, favorite animal, where they were born, ect. The only limit is your imagination.

Here are some more example cards to give you an idea of some of the possibilities:

A card that makes you draw a blank:

What a Cute Puppy

Here’s another card:

You know the good times are over when the Party Patrol comes around

And another:

The correct answer is, of course: "Why it's Christmas Day, sir!"

And one last one for an even 5. It’s worth mentioning here that you can make specific people do specific things. Be forewarned that they can do it right back at you.

Yeah, this actually happens a lot.

So, that’s the jist of Blank White Cards. There are many, many, many other types of cards you can make; there are many types of cards that we’ve invented, but I don’t feel like going to all the trouble of making them in paint. Figure it out for your own damn selves.